Fan Story - Opinions Wanted

Thu Feb 21, 2002 1:42 pm by BenMund

On a recent business flight I tapped out a few words and thoughts for a BR story. I wanted to get some opinions on the idea: November 18, 2023 Los Angles, Sector 4 2:05 a.m. The door slammed open, the smashed lock whipsawing from the splintered doorframe. Heavy slugs shredded the apartment?s interior. The three U.N. shock troops let the noise of splintering glass die down before moving smoothly through the broken doorway and taking positions inside the apartment. A gesture from the largest man sent one troop into the bedroom, and the other into the small bathroom. Silence. ?No one here, cap!? ?Rogers?? ?Ditto. Bedroom?s clean?. The captain exhaled sharply and thumbed the comm on his shoulder. ?Apartment?s clear. He rabbited?. A voice barked over the comm. ?His badge there? VKP? I?m sure as hell his gun?s not?. The captain looked over at the bedroom. His trooper gave a thumbs up, held up a badge and a small box, then shook his head. ?Yeah, Rogers found the badge, but no gun. His old VK?s here, but no Voight-Kampff-Pherm.? ?Goddam it! He must?ve taken it with him. Look over the door jam. Any wires?? ?Yes sir. Two.? ?They lead outside?? The captain leaned out the doorway to see the small painted-over cables leading down the hallway. ?Yes, sir. They run the length of the hall.? ?Well, that?s how he knew you were coming. Report in?. ?Yes sir.? He thumbed off the comm and turned to his two men. ?Well, that?s it, let?s go. Goddam Blade Runners, man. Sneaky bastards.? The shock troops snapped around and headed for the door, boots crushing dozens of delicate paper animals as they left. ----- UN Commander Sano Filcher slammed a hand on his desk. ?Gone! You know what he did? Reversed the passive sense pads on his VKP and spliced it into his hallway. He probably knew every time someone came onto the goddam floor! The squad?s vidcam and electronic surveillance sweeps never even saw it.? The Voight-Kampff-Pherm had been introduced in mid 2023 ? a refined method for detecting replicants that added close-range sensing to the toolkit that spelled death for so many artificial humans. Passive pheromone sampling could ID a replicant with up to 90% accuracy. The traditional sit-down question-and-answer portion was fast becoming a formality. ?Our fault,? muttered Filcher. The pheromone technology in the VKP came out of the UN?s own security labs, originally designed as a way to pick up thermally-shielded troops in war zones. The tech geeks in the lab found that by reversing the sensitivity of the pads and making a few minor adjustments, the setup could be used to identify a replicant?s strong genetically engineered pheromones. The word leaked and the National Police Consortium applied political pressure on behalf of their faltering Blade Runner units. The UN, smelling a good PR opportunity, released the technology to the LAPD test BR Unit. The problem was, Filcher knew, that swapping the setups on the sense pads turned the whole thing back into a damned good alarm system geared for humans. The UN never expected it to be a problem. ?We need to yank the pheromone permit from the goddam cops?, spat Filcher. ?One of ?em goes renegade and now he?s running around the city with a pretty much foolproof way of knowing when someone gets anywhere near him. What?s this psycho?s name again, Orson?? ?Gaff, sir. Detective Eduardo Gaff.? ?Well, Mr. Gaff, we?ll figure out a way to nail your ass yet?. ----- That's the first few paragraphs. Here's the idea: - The BR in question had accidentally found out that the UN and Tyrell were engaging in a little "resource management". They were sampling the best of the Blade Runners and using them as a basis for Off-World political assassination replicants. Rabidly anti-replicant, the BR goes off the deep end and does something unforgivable - accidentally kills a UN or Tyrell official, tries to send the info to a public domain newspaper, something like that. Realizing he just signed his own death warrant, he flees. - The UN demands his termination immediately - the public wouldn't like the implications of the supposed "safety force" being used as the basis for killers of humans. For reasons you'll see in the first few paragraphs, they realize they can't send a human execution squad after him because he's got equipment capable of alerting him of nearby humans. The UN council tries something illegal and potentially disastrous from a PR standpoint - they send a replicant after him. The replicant will be one of the political assassins, perhaps even one based on the renegade Blade Runner (this might be done to fool his sensing equipment - it would recognize the replicant as him). - The replicant might be a new model that can be genetically programmed to last only as long as it's mission. Say, four days. The promise is that if this replicant carries out his duty, he'll be allowed the full four year's life in an OffWorld colony. - Not sure how to end it, but I'm thinking of having the BR commit suicide to allow the replicant to go free - he realizes his life is less deserving than the essentially innocent replicant's. That's it. Thoughts?

Thu Feb 21, 2002 3:28 pm by Deckard BR26354

Ben, this is the sort of stuff we want in the fan-fiction section of Bladezone...
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Thu Feb 21, 2002 3:31 pm by Parallax

I'ts very good. It flows very well.

Fri Feb 22, 2002 11:52 pm by BenMund

Thanks! Any suggestions or comments on the direction or details?

Sat Feb 23, 2002 1:43 pm by IntelliDroid

I am impressed! That was very interesting and it brings up something that I'd never thought about: using a replicant to track down a human.

Sat Feb 23, 2002 2:10 pm by Parallax

You might try to work some of the details into a conversation. I find that works a bit better, but dialogue, especially dialogue that fits into place without being awkward, is hard to write. In my opinion.

Sat Feb 23, 2002 4:35 pm by Centauro

I read once a prologue to a book by Brian Aldiss about his relationship with Stanley Kubrick. There I found a comment by Kubrick on sci-fi writing, a comment that I liked very much. He said something like "the right way to write science fiction is telling everything with as less explanations as possible, as if the reader lived in the tale world and is familiar with the things happening". I know it can be quite difficult to do, specially when you try to make the characters talk about something they both know (but the reader doesn't) and you have to find the way to fit the explanations in conversations, and make those conversations credible. 
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Sun Feb 24, 2002 2:19 am by BRmovie

Interesting stuff. And you already have some interesting replies. Dialogue is certainly one of those crucial things in writing that turns it into a readable story. Other SF writers, (e.g. Greg Bear, David Brin) have also made comments about SF writing that often, you need to get the SF part of it to be background to the actual story and thus explanations need to be subtle or derived from context. Not the easiest thing in the world to do! As for the comment on Reps chasing other Reps, (or pretending to be human, or even not realising they are Reps), that is not so unusual in fan fiction. I won't point to specific stories, because that would spoil those stories. One thing. How is it that a Replicant cannot be detected by something that detects a Human? Perhaps I misunderstood, but unless you are referring to a different sort of Rep, or the use of further technology, then the Reps we are used to in BR are not easily identifiable, (if they could be easily scanned and shown to be different to humans, there wouldn't be a need for a V-K test.) I certainly encourage you to write the full story and then have it published on one or more of the BR sites for everyone to enjoy. Good luck. 
[addsig]

Sun Feb 24, 2002 8:04 am by BenMund

Thanks for the input - it's much appreciated. As for your question - SHORT ANSWER: You're right - I suppose it could detect either. But if a specific replicant has the same or similar pheromones as the operator, he might be able to slip through unnoticed. This is because the operator would have set the machine to ignore his own pheromones. If the machine detected a replicant with the same pheromones as the operator, it would think the replicant was the operator and ignore it. LONG ANSWER: The idea was that a new piece of equipment (in this case, pheromone detection) was originally created to "sound an alert" when a human was near. For this to work at a localized level, you'd have to set it to ignore the operator's pheromones (the idea was that it was used in war zones to detect troops who may be masked in other ways). It was found that replicant pheromones are slightly different, and with minor adjustments, the pheromone test could be used to detect those slight, but easily noticed differences. Perhaps the rep's pheromones are stronger than a human's, or there is some other aspect that would make it fairly easy to seperate. I figured it was a few years after the movie, and technology had progressed a bit. Whew. I moved on to assume that with some tinkering, this pheromone test could be converted back to its original intent - detecting humans. Perhaps it would be as simple as increasing the sensativity to detect the much weaker human pheromones. However, the human operator would still have to set it to ignore his own pheromones, otherwise the thing would be sounding an alarm constantly. So.... the UN can't effectively send a human squad after him - the pheromone detection unit would alert their target that a human was in the area. I'm assuming that if the rep's pheromones are stronger than humans, they'd still set this thing off, right? However, a rep with similar (only stronger)pheromones to the operator would probably not be detected, because the machine had been specifically set to ignore that pheromone set. The whole thing's a bit clunky, and not really that important, I suppose. I was just trying to come up with a plausible reason to send an earth-bound replicant after a human rather than a typical swat team. I also liked the oddity of having a replicant sent out to specifically murder the human on which he was based. I guess it would actually make sense to send out a short-lived rep to kill someone. If the rep dropped dead in a few days, then voila! - no witnesses. Anyway, if anyone has suggestions as to a plausible reason to send a replicant after it's human template, I'd love to hear them! (I was also attracted to the idea that this rep only wanted to off its target because it had the - probably false - promise of being allowed to live it's normal measly four years if it completed the mission). One last question - you think the whole Gaff thing's too hokey? I look forward to any and all replies, suggestions, criticisms, etc! Thanks. [ This Message was edited by: BenMund on 2002-02-24 14:05 ] [ This Message was edited by: BenMund on 2002-02-24 14:06 ] [ This Message was edited by: BenMund on 2002-02-24 14:29 ] [ This Message was edited by: BenMund on 2002-02-24 14:31 ]

Mon Feb 25, 2002 1:37 am by The Dark Knight

For the ending you could have warehouse scene with all J.F.s toys and used replicants, Batty, Leon, Pris etc. A warehouse ending - there's something thats never been done before! <IMG SRC="/forum/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif"> 
[addsig]

Mon Sep 11, 2006 4:43 am by Kipple

Ben,
Did you ever work more on this story? I like your writing style. The descriptions you use make for easy visualizing.

Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:38 pm by Eli Booker

Damn Ben, this is good. I know it's 5 years old, but if you'd like to continue the story and ideas as short films, lemme know.

Basing your story in technology, and hanging your plot twists on technology can be a bit tricky, especially tech you make up, but I think you handled it quite well. You sold it for me.

I think that first paragraph is too vague though. It's stylish, and you kind of drop it on the reader (which I like, you're limiting the visualizations to the room, not the people) but I think the action needs a few more words to flesh it out. That could go either way, I know.

:wink:

Fan Story - Opinions Wanted

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